Deficit Deficit

July 20, 2000

https://www.smartertimes.com/129/deficit-deficit

When is a $490 million surplus described as a "deficit" or "budget woes"? When the newspaper is The New York Times, and the state is Texas, the home of the Republican presidential candidate, George W. Bush.

The Times makes this error twice today. The first time is a headline in the national news section: "Gore, Switching Campaign Plans, Heads for Texas to Focus on the State's Budget Woes." There are no "budget woes." As the article makes somewhat clear about midway through, state spending is going to be $610 million higher than a two-year old estimate, but state revenues are going to be $1.1 billion higher than the same two-year old estimate. That isn't "budget woes," it's a $490 million surplus.

The error is repeated on the op-ed page in an article by Larry Rockefeller. That article says "It's out of the mainstream -- and at odds with true Republican principles of fiscal responsibility -- to plunge back into deficit spending, as Governor Bush has in Texas with big tax cuts for the oil industry and others." Again, this is just plain false. There is no "deficit spending" in Texas. There's a surplus.

The Times admitted this in a correction it published in Saturday's paper. The correction, as it ran on July 15, said, "A headline yesterday about the Texas budget referred imprecisely to a $610 million shortfall. As the article reported, state spending will exceed the amount budgeted but will not exceed tax revenues; there is no deficit."

What's amazing is that even after printing that correction in Saturday's paper, the Times is continuing to repeat the falsehood, as it does in today's headline and op-ed piece.

Missing the Point on Jerusalem: A news story in this morning's New York Times includes the sentence: "The official position of the United States has been that the fate of Jerusalem must be negotiated between the parties." This may be technically true, but it leaves out a key fact. While it is true that the Clinton administration has presented this neutral view on Jerusalem, it is doing so in contravention of American law. The law in question is the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, which passed the Senate by a vote of 93 to 5 and the House by a vote of 374 to 37, and which included the following text: "Statement of the Policy of the United States -- (1)Jerusalem should remain an undivided city in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected; (2)Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel." That is the official position of the United States, but you wouldn't know it from reading today's Times.

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